


Election Night (Not a Political Science Major)

by weekendsareforwhiskey



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, U.S. 2016 Election AU, hotel au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:45:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weekendsareforwhiskey/pseuds/weekendsareforwhiskey
Summary: Election Night November 8, 2016. Sansa finds herself at The King's Landing Hotel immersed in the Republican party's Southern California haven, waiting for the joke to end and for Democrat Daenerys Targareyn to be elected. But as the night proceeds not at seems to be going in her favor and there's only one person who can help keep her mind off of the live results.





	Election Night (Not a Political Science Major)

November 8, 2016

The entire hotel was the party. Every ballroom filled with Republican donors and supporters mixing with high profile politicians and guests. Inferno’s house lights were on and the room screamed American Baratheon Beauty with red, white, and blue balloons and streamers decorating every inch. The VIP lounge had been refitted for the night with four televisions broadcasting the live election results. The four ballrooms, one main one on the first floor and the three on the second floor, each had a screen to broadcast Fox News for the duration of the night.

Every bit proclaimed victory.

Each entrance and exit of the hotel had men and women with barely visible radios wrapped around the shell of their ears, round the clock updates of who was arriving and where. The lobby, being the main entrance, had the heaviest security; fortunately, Sansa didn’t get a pat down from the guard who knew her. He had checked her clutch and waved her and Margery through into the deep red and gold madness that assaulted their vision.  

 Cersei had no budgetary boundaries when it came to this celebration for who they believed would be the victor, but Sansa was surprised when Margaery invited her to join once she got off of work.

“Um, I don’t think I’m truly allowed to do that…” Sansa had started. “Besides…”

“You have to come. Joffrey’s mom won’t say no to him. Even though your dad is on the opposite side he’s still well-known. The Stark name still carries weight on enemy lines. Especially Robb's.”

“I don’t use my father’s name to get in places and Joffrey hates me Margaery. Even if I did, I still work here. I'm the least impressive Stark here. Fuck Robb.” Sansa pulled down her hair and typed in her employee ID on the keypad to clock out for the day. “And seriously I’m not allowed to come to the party.”

Margaery smiled. “I hear you’ve already done some things you’re not allowed to do at work.” Sansa’s eyebrows crinkled as they walked up the stairs towards the employee exit. “What are you talking about?”

“I figured you wouldn’t tell me. It’s okay. Anyway, Joffrey _loves_ me. Or, well, he feels some sort of emotion that is the closest he can get to human affection in his twisted mind.” She shrugged. “He’ll do anything I want.”

“Yeah, if you give him something he wants in return and it’s always worse. You forget I’ve worked here for over a year now. I know the way he works.” She slipped her sunglasses on and readjusted her tote back over her shoulder. Outside was still sticky and too hot for November.  

“Yeah yeah, but Sansa you don’t know how to _play_ him. Whereas I do. He’s just a badly tuned instrument. Play it the right way and it sounds slightly better than it would if you tried to use it like a finely tuned one.” Margaery smirked. “Besides I _already have_ played him and you _already have_ a dress waiting in my suite upstairs with your freshly printed invitation. So let’s go get ready.”

“Woah, woah, woah, I have to go vote first and then I’ll come back.”

Margaery rolled her eyes. “Dany’s going to win there’s no way your vote in a blue state is going to help that.”

Sansa shrugged. “Maybe I just want that ‘I voted’ sticker?”

“We both know that’s not the case you upstanding citizen you.” Margaery sighed and continued down the hill to the employee parking structure with Sansa. “Fine, I’m coming with you just to make sure you don’t duck out on me.”

She’d been there all of five minutes with her sticker proudly displayed over her heart on a dark blue dress, and Sansa had already received raised eyebrows from the corner of the ballroom that Jon patrolled nonchalantly. Immediately upon her arrival with Margaery, Cersei swooped down to take Sansa’s companion by the arm like a doting soon-to-be-mother-in-law. Yet the grip seemed a little too tight, with a forced smile to match, for it to be motherly affection that steered her companion away. Cersei barely spared Sansa a glare but that was the worst she gave her. And Sansa was thankful for that.   

When she was left alone to wander the party alone, attempting not to rub elbows with any of the leading Republican politicians and donors, she found her way back to Inferno where at least three of the screens weren’t blaring Fox. She sat down at the bar and Loras acknowledged her with a nod while he poured a drink for an overly tan, dirty blonde man in a suit who was definitely higher than a kite. A bitter smile spread across his face and she recognized who he was. Jorah Mormont.

The shamed ex-political advisor to the Targaryen campaign; the one who’d been forced to leave after – rumor had it – leaking vital information to the Baratheon campaign. Sansa watched him sip his drink and gaze at the screen above him showing the tallying results that showed two red one blue state. It was 5 pm.

“Well, of course, he was going to get Kentucky and Indiana,” he muttered to himself. Not quietly enough for those around not to hear him, but quietly enough that they knew he wasn’t speaking to them. Granted most of the others weren’t paying attention to the disgraced manager nor were they paying attention to the screen. “She’s going to need a hell of a lot more than Vermont’s electoral votes though.”

“You sound like you don’t believe she’s going to win.” Sansa’s eyes didn’t leave the screen, but she could feel his turn towards her.

“I’m just stating the obvious. You can’t win an election off of the painfully blue, but also incredibly small states. She should have campaigned more in the Midwest and Florida. She’ll lose the electoral college.”

Loras came over to her for her drink order. “Just a Moscow Mule, please. Thanks, Loras.” She continued watching the footage while he quickly made her drink and passed it her way. “Florida?”

“Florida’s been itching towards Republican since the last election. With the retirees and…” his voice dropped lower, “the rich invested in Lannister business. It shows hints of switching back to its 2004 choice of primary color.”

“You’re the first person I’ve heard that doesn’t think she’s going to win.”

A bark of a laugh sounded, “Then you’ve been in very small, very blue circles.”

“Perhaps. But every news source is projecting it will be her.”

“News sources who aren’t based in the Bible belt, the agricultural hub of America, the states hit hardest by liberal initiatives to go green-”

Sansa interrupted with a harsh scoff. “As if paying attention to what oil rigs and pipelines are doing to the earth and the water systems and trying to think of alternatives for what happens when we run out of the finite resources that are the only jobs people are trained for is an awful thing.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. A choir who knows what the midwest is thinking, who knows what the south is saying, and who knows that the right candidate isn’t going to win.”

“Well maybe if she had more trustworthy advisors,” Sansa muttered angrily.

They both turned to each other at the same time. Glazed eyes clouded with intoxication met sober blue.

“I wouldn’t be a believer in everything you hear on CNN and MSNBC.” She could barely hear the words but the threat was clear in his expression.

“Because they only produce fake news? Well lucky for me I read it on Fox. Or was it Breitbart that leaked the news first?  Besides, why else would you be sitting high and getting progressively drunker at a bar in a Baratheon hotel?”

“Lannister,” Jorah snarled.

“What?”

“It’s a Lannister hotel,” a voice behind her said. “Did you forget who you work for again Sansa?”

She turned on her stool while Jorah shifted his view back to the screen ahead of them. Loras seemed to materialize out of nowhere to set a drink down as Petyr sat down on Sansa’s left.

“You seem to keep forgetting where you are and how precarious your invite situation is. Should you really be drawing attention to yourself here on an evening like this?” His eyebrows raised briefly at her before he lifted his glass towards Jorah then took a sip. “Glad _you_ got the invite Mormont. I hear Cersei was very adamant it get to you in time.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His tone was as dry as his throat; he downed his drink. “Littlefinger, you wouldn’t happen to have any-”

A chorus of “Lock her up” started, drawing their attention to the middle of the club. An Inferno girl dressed in a skimpy orange prison romper with a wig matching Dany’s old signature blonde was on the dais and a crowd of men and women surrounded the bottom as Robert Baratheon himself strolled up the steps. Sansa contemplated how many drinks he had in his system this early in the night. One of his cronies passed up a jail made out of painted PVC pipes and placed it over the employee’s head. From her seat at the bar, she couldn’t tell which girl it was and turned to Petyr to ask when Robert began giving a speech. Of sorts.

“Tonight we’re going to win!” The crowd erupted in cheers again. “We’re going to keep that wall up _for_ the people! We’re going to get jobs back _for_ the people who need them in _America_. We’re going to show this nasty socialist woman she can’t do a man’s job!” The crowd had grown in size and volume and at that statement, their cheers drowned out his last bit of inspiration. “When I get in that White House tonight we’re going to make America great again!”

Her heart pounded, a ringing filled her ears, and she felt Petyr’s hand forcing her back down to her seat; a warm hand on her shoulder that moved to her thigh to keep her cemented to the stool.

“Don’t do it,” she felt, more than heard, him say. “There’s no use doing something rash.”

Jorah Mormont could not be kept down though as he side-stepped the crowd and stalked out the employee exit into the kitchens.  No doubt that little speech would be edited from the live footage of every news station camera placed in the building. Or, judging by the fuel that fed the Baratheon campaign fire, they’d be using it as their headline video on their website.

Sansa’s breath was shaky as she looked on at the disgusting idiocy around her. Every person drunk off of the ever-flowing alcohol that couldn’t match the euphoria of being filled in a room of such hatred disguised as caring about “The People.” A room full of white politicians and their trophy wives. Men and women who only received paychecks with at least six zeroes following the first number, who had never worried about their jobs or their trust funds a day in their lives.

Men and women most certainly getting tax breaks, a position of power, or some other bonus if the Baratheon brothers won.

Security guards followed closely behind Robert as he made his way down the stairs leaving the employee up in her cage. He made his rounds around the room as Stannis followed closely behind. A sober face in the room of disorder.

“This is awful. She has to win. Honestly what a fucking – When I get in the White House tonight? Does he understand the first thing about being president of the United States? Or is it all kindergarten-level understanding?”  Sansa turned away to catch Loras’s eye for a refill on her drink. Another bartender that she didn’t know saw her instead. She took her copper cup and returned with a new one. Petyr’s hand retreated from her thigh, returning a bit of decorum to their situation. He stopped Sansa from reaching for her clutch.

“Just charge it to F&B Mya,” he murmured. “Sansa, how did you-”

A breaking news alert sounded and they both looked back at the screen to see Wolf Blitzer announce that South Carolina and West Virginia had been called in Baratheon’s favor.

“Oh fucking shit,” Sansa murmured.

It was the moment she knew she’d need more than two Moscow Mules to get through the night. At a Baratheon party. On election night. With Petyr Baelish.

**Author's Note:**

> I had to abandon the Not a Political Science fic as a whole but this chapter, which is being broken up into a couple of chapters, was written back in 2016 and needed to be published because it was the whole reason I started the fic in the first place! Hopefully it's enough to keep those who enjoyed the idea of this fic happy. I'm sorry my brain just couldn't wrap itself around a true plot idea for the fic!


End file.
